1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer hardware and software, and more particularly to an end-to-end response time measurement for computer programs.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's environment, it is common for desktop computers to run many different local and/or network applications simultaneously. Within such computing environments, it is not unusual for one application to execute significantly slower than other applications. Further, it is not uncommon for the operation of one application to seriously impact the performance of other applications on the computer. As a result, the user may have to wait an inordinate amount of time for applications to respond. Obviously, the wait time experienced by a user is directly related to that person's productivity and business opportunity.
It can be difficult for the user to determine the performance of individual applications, based only on their observable behavior. For example, a user may be unable to reliably detect whether abnormal performance for a specific application is the result of operations performed by that application, or whether it is the result of the impact from another application, or whether it is the result of the performance of a remote system. Further, since each application may be able to perform many different kinds of processing, the user may have no idea that certain requests have significantly worse performance. Thus, there is a need in the art for techniques that allow the performance of various applications to be accurately and automatically measured.